Police 'invite' group giving out free drinks in front of school gate in Nghe An to work

On the afternoon of March 17, Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Duc Cuong - Chief of Vinh City Police said that Ha Huy Tap Ward Police had just invited a group distributing free soft drinks to the ward to work. "Currently, the police are still working with this group so we cannot provide any information yet," said Lieutenant Colonel Cuong.

The truck delivers free drinks. Photo: TH

Meanwhile, according to the reporter's investigation, this group was invited to the ward by the police while distributing free drinks near Nghe An University of Economics. This is also the group thatgive away hundreds of bottles of soft drinks for freefor students at Quang Trung Primary School on the afternoon of March 16 as reported by Nghe An Newspaper.

This afternoon, March 17, while the car was distributing drinks at another school gate, the police invited it in for questioning. Photo: Tien Hung

Accordingly, at the beginning of the afternoon class on March 16, a group of people in a car stopped in front of the gate of Quang Trung Primary School, Vinh City, to give out free bottles of drinking water to students. Upon discovering the incident, even though it was not yet time for class, Principal Tu Thi Thu Huong still beat the drum to enter the classroom, asking the group to explain the reason for giving out free water, but they quickly left.

In order to promptly prevent students from consuming the drink, Quang Trung Primary School used loudspeakers to call on students to hand over their water bottles. The result was 183 bottles of 500 ml carbonated soft drinks, the packaging stated to contain real orange extract, vitamin B3 and minerals, with a blurred expiration date. In addition, the school also held an urgent meeting to request teachers to collect a list of students who had consumed the drink to monitor their health. The result was that 53 students said they had consumed this drink.

More than 180 water bottles were collected by Quang Trung Primary School. Photo: Tien Hung

At 4 p.m. the same day, nine fourth-grade students in a class who drank bottles of orange juice showed signs of stomachache and nausea. They were taken to the Quang Trung Ward Health Station for examination and were allowed to return home the same day. "We checked the barcode on the water bottles but found no information. We suspect that the product was of poor quality, causing the students to have stomachaches. The school has handed over the recalled water bottles to the police," said Principal Tu Thi Thu Huong.

Quang Trung ward police later arrived at the school to investigate the incident.